Absent Faces
by Anzer'ke
Summary: Of all the Wizards, in all the world...she chose me.


Never trust a PI who claims not to monologue.

Oh they'll tell you they don't. They'll look all serious and intimidating and professional, and they'll talk about how the real world isn't like the stories. They'll probably bring up how most of the job is just boring old surveillance, most of them love to drone on about that, there's even an entire lecture on the subject at the big annual conference1 that we all go to once before the gullibility is beaten out of us.

That's why the amateurs all think that monologuing is dumb.

Those of us who stuck around long enough to hear about the proper conferences know better.

We know that talking aloud can help when you need to fix things in your memory, or approach a problem from a new angle. We tell each other that the job is a rough one sometimes and acting a little weird can be a big help with shaking that off. Most of all, we learn that the time between cases can be excruciatingly boring and we've all got to find entertainment somehow.

Since I'm a Wizard2 and therefore unable to pass the time with a mini-tv and some other modern convenience, my customary method of passing the time was a book. Unfortunately the bargain bin had let me down in horrifying fashion and the perpetrator had been tossed into a random corner from which I wasn't feeling motivated to retrieve it.

This was why I lent back in my chair, stared fixedly at one of the more artistic water stains on my office ceiling, and began musing aloud about the state of my city and her cruel beauty. How the heat of the summer brought all the crazies frothing to the surface (true) and it fell to me alone to keep them in line (false) for my name was Harry Dresden and of course that was when I noticed that the door was open.

It was so hot and my air conditioning was so non-existent that I had left my door ajar. It hadn't seemed like a big deal when I was looking forward to a day of sitting in my office without a single client to shield me from the imminent flood of bills.

So of course a client had walked in through the open door, seen me in full Marlowe, and was now staring at me with the kind of eyes runway models use to look at rats.

Or so I assumed by the rest of her outfit, given that everything above her nose was concealed by a deep blue veil hanging from her hat. Said outfit consisting of a purple and blue dress that even I could see was worth more than my entire office, painted onto a body that one of the aforementioned runway models might have dreamed up in collaboration with an assortment of Olympic athletes. Her jewellery was tasteful -therefore worth twice as much as my house- and her delicate heels probably required normal people to take out a mortgage. All of which would have made me very suspicious indeed if I hadn't already maxed that out due to the part where she was, I repeat, wearing a completely opaque veil in the middle of Chicago's best Miami impression.

You see, Wizards such as myself, and magical beings in general, can do quite an assortment of things with the connection that eye contact creates. I can see right into someone's soul,4 quite a few things can take control of you in some way, and really heavy hitters can pull off stuff like reading your mind or killing you outright.

So between the obvious precaution against a Wizard, the inhumanly gorgeous figure that I was working very hard to ignore, and the obliviousness to a heatwave, I wasted no time in reaching for my gun and blasting rod beneath the table. Safe in the knowledge that no normal person with the money for a dress5 like she was wearing would have come within a mile of someone as lowbrow as me.

Of course the last time a beautiful supernatural entity came to my office it had been a situation that no amount of fire and lead would have gotten me out of, so I held off on any actual threats for the moment. Just until I could be sure that said threats wouldn't result in my spleen making a close personal acquaintance with the wall behind me.

Instead I focused my gaze on her hat, a weird smooth thing that made me think of sea life,6 and asked the obvious question. "Do you have an appointment?"

She didn't give me the pleasure of looking annoyed, nor did she point out that I clearly wasn't very busy. She just swept further into the room and settled into one of the seats I kept opposite my desk, after first giving it a look like she wasn't sure what it was but was nevertheless deeply offended by its existence and appalled that she was being forced to interact with it.

A reaction that did more to sell me on her being some rich socialite than any other part of her disguise. Not that I considered it a mark in her favour.

"Ma'am, whatever you need from me I'm going to at least need a name to help you with it."

She stared at me, or possibly she didn't, the veil made it hard to tell. Either way she kept it up just long enough to make me really uncomfortable. Then she spoke, her voice smooth, calm, and with the slightest hint of an echo, as if her disguise wasn't already thin enough.

Not that I gave a damn after hearing what she had to say.

"I am the Lotus. You may call me whatever you wish though, so long as you find my child."

I'm the first to admit that I'm a caveman.

Me see woman sad, me sad.

Me see child hurt, me mad.

Me see woman sad 'cause child missing, me take case without stopping to think if maybe me being set up.

Once upon a time I would have been doomed the moment the impossibly beautiful woman told me her child was missing with a hitch in her voice. Then had a come a certain day some handful of years(7) ago when I came back to my office to find a woman calling herself Ms. Sommerset. In a shocking twist, she too had been distractingly gorgeous and dressed in more money than I saw in a year. She'd also taken all of five minutes to reveal herself as the Queen of Air and Darkness, impale my hand with a letter opener, and back me into a particularly shitty deal with the negotiating technique of Darth Vader in an extended union dispute.

So when that caveman voice yelled at me to make the pretty lady stop being sad and go save the child thing, the rest of me yelled right back. Metaphorically speaking that is. I'm not schizophrenic,(8) despite what a lot of people who come across my ad in the phonebook assume.

I kept my gun and blasting rod pointed firmly at the thing masquerading as a grief-stricken mother, confident that my desk was far too cheap and flimsy to protect her if I opened fire. All the while my eyes flicked up and down her, straining for any clue as to what I was dealing with.

Which is when she gestured negligently with the fingers of one hand. I squeezed the trigger the moment I saw movement, but my gun clicked uselessly.

Dropping it, I threw my chair backwards across the floor. Raising my blasting rod with a roar of, "Fuego!"

The end of the precisely carved tool of destruction glowed a cherry red, like a freshly stoked ember. Nothing else happened.

At that moment I knew with absolute bowel-clenching certainty that I was in over my head. Not because my blasting rod hadn't been useful, it's the magical equivalent of a big old handgun and just as likely to be ineffective against the magical equivalents of tanks and planes and giant monsters.

No, the problem was that I had no idea why it wasn't working.

Wizards are all about knowing things. We're known as 'The Wise' for a damn good reason, except in this case I had no wisdom to speak of.

Meanwhile my guest was still sitting just as calmly as ever, head pointed in my direction and posture indicating that she had never felt the slightest threat from me. Meaning that she had disabled both my weapons and been confident in the process. A process that once again, I couldn't even begin to guess at.

"Are you ready to continue?" she asked, as though I'd stepped out to take a call instead of making a spirited attempt at killing her.

It made me feel a little silly to be honest. I think I resented that more than anything else.

Still, for lack of better options I coughed awkwardly and returned my blasting rod to its holster. Bending to pick up my gun would have involved losing sight of her and that was a very dumb idea, so I ignored it as I sat back down and pulled my chair back into position.

A raised hand almost had me going for another weapon, especially when something shot up from the floor into her grip. Recognising my gun in her hand was little comfort, even if the iron inlaid into the grip she was now holding did narrow down the list of what she might be.

 _'Not a Faerie, check.'_

Also not too out of touch with the modern world, going by how expertly she twirled the revolver to hold it by the barrel, offering it to me with a graceful movement.

I reached for it on reflex, cursed myself too late as my hand was already on it, and found that contact free of any horrible magical effects. She just handed me back my gun with a very slight smile, like I was a puppy that had done something naughty but adorable.

"It is fortunate that I came here alone." she noted in a clinical tone as I holstered my gun, "Had another of my children witnessed that, you would be dead."

It didn't sound like a threat. I don't think she was even trying to scare me. Just observing a mildly interesting fact. How a normal person might mention imminent rain, she had brought up the fate of those who pointed weaponry at her.

I'd have been less pissed off if she just came out and threatened me.

"Lady, if your children are so damn capable then what do you need me for?"

She didn't paste me across the walls for my insolence. She didn't even seem to care, and that disregard was exactly what was making me angry. I don't like being made to feel small.

"One of my children was taken. From a place of absolute safety, by means unknown to me and unforeseen by her. She was in contact in one instant, vanished alongside her vessel in the next." There was grief there, undisguised by the weird distortion in her voice, she was making no attempt to mask it. Together with her calm tone it put me in mind of some of the braver mothers of missing children that I'd worked for over the years, and that was making it hard to stay angry.

I gave it my best shot though, "Still doesn't explain why you need me."

"Though I divined her destination, that place, this place, was foreign in many ways. Alien. I could not risk any more of my children and the task was too great to entrust to an operative." She paused, turning in her seat to look out the window, not that my office had much of a view. "Upon arrival I examined all available surveillance data-"

"From where?" I interrupted, ignoring both the unusually technological approach and the question of how she obtained that kind of thing. My voice called her focus back to me, to my immediate regret.

She didn't show any anger at the interruption, replying unhelpfully, "I examined all available data."

"But from where?"

"Everywhere." she made a face of realisation, as if it had only just hit her that I assumed she'd narrowed down the target instead of just searching the entire planet. "If you are concerned for a fresh trail, there is no need. It was not a significant data volume."

I can't claim to be all that up to date on modern technology, what with anything more delicate than a toaster breaking as soon as I get near it. Still I was pretty sure that she'd just described more information than I could get through in a lifetime as insignificant. Something that only made my initial question more relevant.

"So again, what do you need a single private detective for? Sounds like you have things well in hand."

By now her calm temperament was getting on my nerves all by itself, her voice was even as she resumed, "No information relevant to my child was present.(9) However, I was able to discern a pattern. A tale told by the absence of knowledge."

"And that tale told you you needed a low rent investigator?" I wasn't usually in the habit of downplaying my skills, but then I was getting a strong impression that I wasn't going to get a choice in whether to take the case, making my best option that 'the Lotus' would decide I wasn't suitable. "Gotta say Lily, seems to me you might have read it wrong."

"No. Mr Dresden, that tale told me I needed a Wizard."

She tossed a phonebook onto my desk, despite lacking even a hint of a place she could have been keeping it. The thick book fell open to a page I knew very well, my advertisement clear for all to see.

 **HARRY DRESDEN — WIZARD**  
Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations.  
Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates.  
No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties or Other Entertainment

It was a nice ad, despite some of my acquaintances and their unwanted commentary on its contents, and it got me a lot of my business. All of it mortal and most of it minor.

Suddenly it seemed like a very bad idea.

"You were the Wizard best suited for my needs, in skills, in experience, and in location."

She had pulled a sheet of stiff odd-looking paper from what I assumed was the same somewhere she'd gotten the phonebook, and was tracing back and forth on it with what looked like nothing more than a solid gold pencil. Without ever turning her head towards what her hands were doing, she said, "My child is within your reach. Locate her and contact me, and you will be rewarded for your efforts."

"And if I don't take the case?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

Or so I thought.

My words stilled her voice, even her 'pencil' for a moment. Then she resumed the latter and her face split in a smile that I would have called reserved on a less stoic woman.

"If you refuse the mission I will leave your office."

I barely held back from rolling my eyes, "And what happens when you leave my office."

"I will continue my search. Your actions are your own, perhaps you will resume your earlier performance?"

You know when you're climbing stairs, and it's late at night, and you think there's one more but when you go to step on it your foot goes through empty air and it's like your whole world stutters?

Yeah, that was my experience of that moment.

I'd had more than one job from a powerful person who could do horrible things to me if I refused to do what they wanted. They'd just never promised not to do it before.

"What if I take the job and fail?" I groped for familiar ground.

This time she put the pencil down completely, the golden implement vanishing in a flicker of light. Her sigh was a small thing, but there was the echo of a sob within it, and suddenly I felt less like a defiant underdog and more like an asshole giving a scared mother a hard time.

"Mr Dresden, I do not harm the innocent, I do not punish my allies for failure. There are no veiled threats here." She finally looked at the paper -or whatever it was- that she'd been shading in or whatever, and the side I couldn't see seemed to fixate her attention entirely. "Should you refuse you will not be punished. Should you fail...the only one who will suffer, is her."

With her final words she raised her head, and placed the paper atop my new phonebook with absolute gentleness.

It was a picture. Perfect as any photograph, but with a passion and love in every detail that rivalled any painting I'd ever seen. A girl, just barely a teen, depicted with a mother's love and a machine's honesty all at once. Her hair was shorn to nearly her scalp, while her pale skin was marked with piercings and some kind of growth along her neck and around her ears.

All my anger fell away. Fell down to the same dark place in me that I kept all my feelings about missing children in, and joined the tight ball of fury that waiting to consume whoever had dared.

"She is older than she appears." the Lotus wasn't looking at me, I don't think, but at the picture she had drawn. The affection in her voice was unmistakable, despite her calm, "An ancient warrior, and yet still a child. My child. She deserves a chance to grow beyond..." Whatever she had been working towards saying, she cut herself off. "Find her, protect her, bring her back to me Harry Dresden. You will be rewarded."

With that she rose from the chair, graceful as ever, and held her hand above one side of my cheap flea-market desk, and stated, "I understand natural materials retain value here."

Then a kind of stream of tiny boxes of light poured from her hand, coming together on my desk and flashing one after another into bars of gold.

After a few moments there were four of them on my desk, the weight making the poor thing creak ominously. I picked one up, hefting it and scratching at it with a fingernail and generally checking it for authenticity with the part of my mind that dealt with money reduced to gibbering at the back of my mind.

"Will this cover operational costs?" Asked the possibly benevolent creature in the form of a woman, while a squeaky voice in my head screamed about bills and payments and being able to eat at burger king every night for the rest of forever.

While that voice was engaged, the nobler side of me just barely managed to squeak out, "It won't be easy to use that. Do you have anything smaller?"

She swept a hand over the bars. Light flashed, and there was an equal volume of gold coins spilling across my desk.

I grabbed one before it could roll to the floor, still feeling light headed as I flipped it over and over in my fingers. One side held a symbol, three curved lines atop one another, with two to either side, that I thought might be a stylised lotus. The other had text that I had never seen anything like, spiralling from the edges into the middle, the tight lines somehow drawing the eye until I felt like I might fall into the middle of it.

I snapped out of it with an effort of will, and looked at the Lotus with very different eyes to when she walked in.

 _'Stars and stones, I really hope this isn't bullshit.'_

It was a rare thing for practicality and ethics to cross paths. Now that they had, I didn't see much of a choice at all.

"I'll take the case."

(1) – It sounds great on paper, until you start to meet your colleagues and discover the attendance is less Holmes meets Miss Marple, and more Clouseau meets the greasy ex-cop in desperate need of a shower. The whole thing was a waste of money. I didn't even get to network, not that I had much desire for the number of Officer Night Sweats.

(2) – Shockingly, this gets me a lot less business than the PI job does. Paying work especially.(3)

(3) – Technically becoming a Warden last year meant that all my Wizardly actions were now paying work. Even more technically, the crummy pay for Wardens combined with how much of my time was spent on Wizardly things would put that hourly rate too low to count as paying. Prisoners got more money than that.

(4) – Not as useful as it sounds. They get to see mine too, and the whole thing is so deep and meaningful that little things like 'can I trust this person' or 'are they making everything up' tend to get lost in the metaphorical wonders at the centre of a person's existence.

(5) – There's a strange dichotomy in expensive clothing. On the one hand they want it hand tailored and unique. On the other hand they want their commission to result in something lacking anything so human as a flaw. Given that her dress looked to have been hand stitched by the terminator, expensive was probably an understatement.

(6) – It might be considered either an occupational hazard or a worrying premonition that my mind immediately jumped from there to thoughts of things lurking down at the very bottom of the ocean. Where it's too dark for anyone to see them.

(7) – I carefully did not think about exactly how long ago it was -four years- for the same reason I try not to think about the current year -2006- and my birthday in the same sentence.

(8) – The only voice in my head is the shadow of a fallen angel, which doesn't make me sound less insane but it's true all the same.

(9) – I would later learn exactly how carefully worded that sentence had been. As it turned out, that morning was and remains the greatest spike in anonymous tips ever, across the entire planet. Everything from cops hearing about abduction victims, to city officials learning exactly how many corners had been cut on their latest hospital's construction. Each and every one uniquely worded and tuned to best effect. Whether this fact is terrifying or uplifting is a subject of much debate for me.


End file.
